PTA sets $23.25 million for ‘cellular phone licence’ auction
By: Muhammad Yasir
KARACHI: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has set $23.25 million as bid earnest money for auction of cellular phone defunct licence to be held on March 28 for frequency spectrum of 800MHz.
The base price of the mobile cellular licence has been fixed at $155 million for duration of around eight years till April 18, 2020.
The PTA will award one technology-neutral nationwide licence to cellular mobile operators (CMOs) and including existing and new players, which was earlier hold by Instaphone before termination of its services and operation.
The licence awarded will be inclusive of radio frequency spectrum between 824.265 MHz – 831.645 MHz (7.38 MHz) and 869.265 MHz – 876.645 MHz (7.38 MHz). The winning operator may launch any technology including 2.5G, 3G or 4G technologies for rendering services.
The PTA in its Memorandum of Information (IM) 2012 stated that the bidding committee will be announced prior to start of the auction and shall continue the auction until there are no further bids. The time duration between two bids shall be of five minutes. Each bidder shall be granted a timeout of 15 minutes each, on request, only twice during the entire auction process.
Each successive bid(s) shall have to be more than the already quoted bid. Therefore, the subsequent bid increment shall be in multiple of $2 million with a minimum bid limit of 2 million and maximum bid limit of $10 million.
The successful bidder shall deposit 50 percent of the auction winning price, that is, initial licence/spectrum fee after adjustment of the bid earnest money within 30 working days in PTA designated bank account.
The remaining 50 percent of the auction winning price shall be deposited in five equal annual instalments payable in dollars or equivalent in rupees. If the successful bidder fails to make the payment of first 50 percent of auction winning price (initial licence/spectrum fee) within the stipulated time, the next highest bidder(s) in order of their bid(s) will be offered the licence on the same auction winning price.
If no bidder is found ready to match the auction winning price, the bidding session will be closed without awarding any licence, PTA stated. PTA shall forfeit the bid earnest money and all other amounts received from the defaulting bidders.
The licence shall only be issued after payment of first 50 percent of the initial spectrum fee within 30 working days from the auction date.
PTA reserves the right to modify or terminate the auction process at any time in its sole discretion. In such an event, bid earnest money would be returned to the bidder within 30 working days without bearing any liability.
PTA reserves the right, on the recommendation of the bidding committee, to disqualify any bidder and forfeit its money for different reasons such as failure of payment, misrepresentation and inaccuracy of facts in applications and corrupt practice, meaning the offering, giving, receiving or soliciting of anything of value to influence a public official in relation to auction process.
By: Daily Times
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